U.S. UNIVERSITIES SEE RISE IN EAST EUROPEAN STUDENTS

STANFORD -- In the 1970s, American universities saw an influx of students
from oil-rich countries in the Middle East. In the 1980s, it was students
from Asia, particularly the People's Republic of China.

Now, with glasnost and the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, Stanford and
other U.S. universities are seeing another trend: a small but rapidly
increasing number of students from Eastern Europe and what was the Soviet
Union.

According to the Institute of International Education, the number of
Eastern European students at U.S. universities in 1990-91 grew by 42 percent
from the previous year - from 3,400 to 4,800.

At Stanford, the percentage rise in Soviet students is particularly
striking. Eighteen months ago, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
visited the university, reporters were able to track down only one Soviet
student on campus. Today, there are 14.

"I think the Soviet Union has been ready to do this for quite a long
time," said John Pearson, director of Stanford's Bechtel International
Center, which keeps the count of international students on campus. "The
Soviets are now interested in direct exchange; it's just a matter of getting
the money to come."

Although many Soviet students receive some form of financial aid from
their colleges, including privately funded scholarships and research
assistantships, married students often have to leave their spouses and
children behind because they cannot afford to bring them, Pearson said.

"We even heard of a few cases last year where Soviet students bound for
California arrived on the East Coast and then didn't even have enough money
to catch the connecting flight west," he said.

Getting hard currency out of their countries is only one of the obstacles
facing Soviet and Eastern European students who want to come to the United
States.

For Tanya Podchiyska, a Stanford freshman from Bourgas, Bulgaria, just
applying to American colleges was an exercise in bureaucratic frustration.

Podchiyska decided to come to college in America after a group of visiting
Canadian students urged her to apply. But neither the required Scholastic
Aptitude Test nor the American College Test were given in Bulgaria, so a
special testing center had to be established in Sofia for her and two other
students.

Delays in the mail also played havoc with her admissions process. She
applied "blindly" to every school that sent her an application in time,
including Harvard, Dartmouth and the University of Chicago, but the completed
forms frequently were lost en route to the United States. "I sent my Stanford
application three times," she told the Stanford Daily.

Those Soviet and East European students who do make it to the United
States are generally thrilled with the freedom of discourse and quality of
academic resources that they find on American campuses.

"The conditions to work here are very good - good libraries, good
experimental data, good computers," said Alexandr Draganov, a graduate of
Kiev State University who is working toward a Stanford doctorate in
electrical engineering. "Here I can do more than I could at home.

"I am sure that next year maybe more Soviet students will come, if
American universities will accept them."

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